Owl Sketch With You

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Tuesday, February 14, 2012

So I've been planning Alexis' card for months... MONTHS! I originally intended it to be his Christmas card, but for one reason or another, I never got further than sketching bits of it... well, now that I am finished with the card, I think it better suits Valentine's Day. :)

I'd like to add that, yes, that is a boomerang that Xuco is wielding. Or better yet, a catterang. My materials were colored pencil, watercolors, Sharpie, and LOVE!! I find it unfortunate that the watercolors in this are more washed-out than the original, the LOVE is BOOMING!

Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Well, don't be. Although I had fun working on this, the final product leaves much to be desired. Watercolors are always fun though! They are, in fact, my favorite medium to use. So after I started digging around for my mini-sized watercolors, Xuco had just decided to use his for the first time! Yay!

For this project, I pulled out my watercolor paper, my travel-sized watercolors (with collapsible paintbrush), a paper towel, and a cupcake-shaped box that I decided to designate as my water container. Simply because you can never have enough cuteness.

First I sponged some diluted Cerulean Blue onto the watercolor paper. It spreads more evenly if the paper is wet all over, with the pigment spread on after. After the background dried, I sketched some jellies with Azo Yellow (I think it was?).

Then I detailed with an orange of some sort :P

After I added some more layers of reds, oranges, and browns, (and completely skipping over this tutorial a bit! Sorry!) I started painting around the tops of the jellys in a thick coat of Cerulean Blue. I painted out some tentacles and remembered to leave some spaces under the jellies for the "oral arms."

And then I just gave up completely on the tutorial and just had fun with painting. :P For the oral arms, I just splotched a thick coat of the white paint. I also defined the tentacles a bit. In the end, this was fun to work with, but BOY do I need to practice more with my watercolors. I feel like I am generally more delicate but this ended up being a bit clunky, know what I mean? Ah well.

But not self-portraits. Instead, Lyndsey and I drew each other. Firstly in a more naturalistic manner, and then in a more stylized fashion. Here are my drawings:

I think my first one was looking pretty terrible so I tried again.

That looks more like the Lyndsey I know! And then I tried to draw her in more silly ways on the right.

And some more!

Ah, this is Lyndsey with my Xuco portraits. First I drew a semi-realistic Xuco (we each took 30 min for the realistic portraits)...

And here are my stylized Xucos (15 minutes):

I think I could have pushed the boundaries a little. Well, a lot. Once again, I am having trouble making variations in style, they're all too similar to each other. I need more more MORE exaggeration! Xuco tends to draw very exaggerated faces. Sometimes they are quite scary. In fact, it worries me slightly that he said the second set of portraits look "more like the Lyndsey he knows."

But, really, I think his realistic drawing is still a bit stylized. But to be fair, my stylized drawing is a bit too realistic. I think we each need to push our boundaries: him with drawing with more realism and myself with more stylization. Let's see if Xuco and I can strengthen our drawing skills by focusing on these faults! >:)

Thursday, January 19, 2012

Hello, again! This is Lyndsey with the newest batch of sketches! Tonight, Xuco and I drew (OOOooOoOoOh, puns!) our inspiration from Amazon Horned Frog (Ceratophrys cornuta).

We took 25 minutes to draw realistic versions of it. You can see that, instead, I drew two frog skulls, half of a fleshy frog, and a sullen girl in the top-left corner of the page... I really need to focus more on gestures and less on detailed drawings...

But then, Xuco recommended that we followed Katy Hargrove's lead and tried our hands at a fun shape assignment. Basically, we drew simple organic shapes, and later filled the shapes in with details, resulting in a variety of funky wonky frogs! It's a very useful exercise in that it forces you to draw what you know into something unexpected. Read more about her drawing exercise at her blog! http://tangrala.blogspot.com/2011/11/ctnx-demo.html

Then we chose our favorite frog. I chose the one in the center of the page... and then we elaborated on our chosen frog, making variations of it.

And now Xuco's frogs:

Mentlegen. Behold, my ribbits:

An interesting critter, this frog. I definitely dig the little pointy ends on its eyes. And now, the shape exercise Lyndsey described above:

I really like this exercise because you end up with this ugly mess, but in there somewhere there is almost always one thing you sort of like and can extrapolate from! And so I did:

Tuesday, January 17, 2012

Xuco here. Lyndsey and I decided to draw some chinchillas, and so we did. First we took a more naturalistic approach in order to understand what these critters look like. You can see my attempts here:

Then we took a more stylized approach!

And now I turn it over to Lynds:

Hey! First of all, thanks for viewing! Xuco and I have been sketching together for a short while now. What we like to do is to brainstorm ideas, agree on an assignment, time ourselves, and once we are finished, show each other our results. It's a fun way to get the creative juices flowing (ew?) and see the difference in our interpretations. This is also a way that we spend quality time together as a couple since we are currently living 2,115 miles apart from each other! Insanity!

Back to the chinchillas! I would like to point out that while Xuco has a greater amount variety of chinchillas sketched, I have a smaller amount and my stylized chinchillas aren't very different from my realistic ones. Alas! I will try to add more variety next time! :)